A Welcome Invasion

Why stake our future on casinos that are enviro-monsters?

by Bruce Schimmel

The British are coming. And I hope they find a way to stay. Because the U.K. is five, maybe 10 years, further down the path to environmental security. And Philadelphia, frankly, needs their help.

I realized how far Philadelphia has to go last week, when I was telling an architect from Britain about the saga of the waterless urinals.

The architect was one of six sustainability experts that the British government had flown over to drum up some consulting business here.

When I told him how Philly's plumbers had refused to install the enviro-friendly urinals in the new Comcast tower, I may have detected a slight quiver in the Brit's upper lip.

But when I recounted the compromise — which involved sets of redundant plumbing —- the man's mouth popped opened, and a single word dropped out: "Why?"

Why, indeed. Why are we still picking each other's pockets, instead of making buildings with a future? And why, especially, are we staking so much on casinos that are environmental monsters?

These two questions echoed in my head as the six U.K. architects treated their American counterparts — who packed a big room in the Cira Centre for a Delaware Valley Green Building Council-sponsored program — to a sample of what they've made in the last five years.

The Brits' creations drew so many wows that it sounded like an amen choir. Here are a few notable showstoppers:

• A soaring concert hall made of renewable, reusable materials that employs a nearby canal for heating and cooling.

• A high-rise building whose floors slide in and out of a central core to suit the season.

• A village of townhouses, warmed by excess heat from a nearby supermarket, which also reuses methane from human waste.

• Low-income rental homes, sited and crafted so that heating costs an average of about $2 a week. Engineered to be deconstructed, their building materials could be recycled in 50 years.

Other amenities — green roofs, gray water recycling, town planning to avoid driving — were part of nearly every development.

Wow, indeed.

The Brits are serious about climate change. Every new building in the U.K. must calculate how much greenhouse gases it emits — known as its carbon footprint. Because by 2016, it's now being proposed that no new building in Britain be allowed to put out any greenhouse gases. They must all have a carbon footprint of zero.

The British are coming, and to get them to stay means recasting our zoning and building codes. For now, all we've got is the promise of reform, a will-of-the-wisp that could disappear with a change of administration. Elect the wrong mayor, and we'll continue the pay-to-play, pocket-picking thievery that enriches few and steals the future from all.

Which brings me to my second question, about the environmental impact of the casinos along the Delaware.

The best man to ask, Gov. Ed Rendell, was also in town last week to celebrate another enviro-invasion — this one from the Germans.

Rendell held a press conference at the Friends Center to congratulate Conergy — the German-based, renewable energy giant — for buying a small Pennsylvania firm, Mesa Environmental Sciences.

Rendell was button-poppin' proud of the commonwealth's Green Power Leadership award from the feds, and he touts the state for being second only to California in the number of LEED-certified buildings.

But when I asked him about casinos and the environment, his first response was downright weaselly.

I asked Rendell again: Why aren't the casinos mandated to join the growing number of Pennsy's LEED-certified buildings?

The governor glowered like he wanted to slap me. But to his credit, he admitted that LEED certification "should have been in the original legislation." That "in retrospect, it's something that should have been done."

I believe that casinos shouldn't be built at all. But if they are to be built they must be made to world-class standards: worthy of the British, of the Germans, of all the countries who signed the Kyoto accord. And, above all, worthy of us.

(bruce@schimmel.com)